Ok, curiosity got the best of me and I hunted down the gears I used on my Orfey class rudder drive. I was right, all the gears I have here are 48 pitch. As odd as it may seem, they mesh surprisingly well and rotate quite smooth up to an angle of nearly 40°. It seems that as the angle increases that the importance of proper backlash rises as well. It seems far less forgiving as the angle rises and you begin to reduce contact area. On the plus side, its much easier to control the backlash as well, just shoot for your two angled gears to contact the drive gear approximately in the center of its width when dropped between them and fine tune the backlash with excellent accuracy by simply raising or lowering the drive gear with shims. I don't know what the center to center distance between your rudder shafts is at the desired height, but it is possible that the 48 pitch gears might work for you, although I think you are on the mark with the 32 pitch.
Good to know, thanks!. they are very tight together back there at the scale location. I will have to look into clearance as there is not much. I may have to have an odd support structure with a bearing on either side of the gears. I will draw it up and post it here. I figure once the rudders are worked out then I can move on to the screws. once that is done, then the rib detailing will be straight forward
She is not a battlecruiser under the British system, which we tend to use (light armor, big guns, lots of speed). Mackensen was more like a modern fast battleship really. But the Germans never built British style battle cruisers, all of the German BC's had reasonable armor as they were designed to fight other big gunned ships, while the British BC's were designed to scout and hunt armored cruisers. At Jutland they fought several British dreadnoughts including the super-dreadnoughts of the QE class and did very well for themselves. I can only imagine what would have happened if there were several Mackensens along to really pound the British armor. At the start of the war the Goeben was the most powerful ship in the Mediterranean (hence why the British had to get rid of her) and she wasn't the most powerful BC afloat. What about using turrets from Baden? While not quite right they are pretty close and are readily available. Rather than modify gears you should be able to get the "misalignment" by using stock 32 pitch gears and having them mesh at the top. Given rudder loads are small it should work and many of us have done this by accident over the years.
Baden turrets are too large, but I have scaled the model down. I will probably make some laser cut forms that can be easily turned into either a plug or a turret
I know they are large but they look fine for a semi scale model as long as you increase the barbette diameter. And given that our barrels are way large for scale, the larger turret looks a lot more proportional. And from a functional stand point larger turrets are a lot easier to fit guns into.
Well, I think I have the rudder figured out. I can fit a pair of offset chain sprocets combined with a servo city part to create a chain drive on the rudder. After that is drawn then the gearbox needs to be drawn. About a third of the ribs are at their preliminary cut shape. once all are there then the keel will go in followed by decks.
So this ought to work well for the rudders. I need to drop the servo a little bit to better align the sprockets but the clearance is there. the only question is whether the roller chain will support that amount of twist. Upshot is that even if it does not, the chain only needs to exist for about 3/4 of an inch away from each sprocket, the intermediate section can be a cable, rod, or other compliant option (which would make tensioning the cable a breese with a small turnbuckle. Currently the parts are fiber reinforced nylon from econobelt.com or sdp/si.com (about 4 bucks a sprocket), the mount on the servo is a servo city shaft adapter (10 bucks).
I really need to figure out how to scrip this.. every freakin rib goes something like this: Offset curve Offset curve Line Rectangle Line Line Rectangle Extrude Cut Mirror ahh well, about half the ribs now have their preliminary keel interface and sheeting interface. after they all are done then the deck interface will be designed
Making ribs can be tedious. For me, it went faster after I prebuilt the notches for the keel, -1" stringer, and subdeck. Then all I had to do was copy the prebuilt blocks and do some trimming. The Mackensen is looking good.
well the L helped a lot. She self aligns quite nicely so I intend to keep the general theory of construction to maintain that feature. I will be building in two rudder setups. One with the angled scale rudders meant for the chain drive and an additional piece that will have straight posts meant for whatever people want to do.
So I am doing something a bit different for stuffing tubes this time around. The cut holes are for 0.250 inch diameter tubes, the slots are there so that those of us that run larger tubes can easily create properly located openings for 3/8". I am only planning on powering the inboard shaft pair but I have added an extra rib to make drilling the thru hole for the outboard shaft easy. As drawn it is configured to hold a non-functioning stuffing tube for cosmetic purposes.
So the rudders are finally sorted out via chain drive with intermediary cable to enable rotation. each end of the chain will need to be about 1 inch past the 180 degree mark on the pulleys plus a link or two. the remainder of the link will be cables. cable guides may be needed but those can easily be added with horizontal rod durring the build at the proper location, although I don't think they will be strictly necessary. Remaining work is to do the interlock detailing on the ribs and deck, and the superstructure. she is getting there at the expense of the littorio
If I may make a suggestion... (assuming no one else has mentioned it yet) After seeing the Littorio in person it might be an added bonus to move the double keel a little farther apart for water channeling purposes. The L's keels are slightly close in comparison to the other ships water channeling I have seen. Just a thought. no matter what you do some damn fine work and the ships are beautiful!
that I have done. The L's double keel spacing was set by the size of the 20AH LiFe bricks I was planning on using. a pair sit low in the hull on either side of the channel, locked in by the slightly raised wood
